President-Elect Obama began to sketch his economic recovery plan in his weekly address yesterday. It’s long on spending but short on price tag.

The items he features in the talk include energy, roads and bridges, schools, broadband, and electronic medical records.

Of the items on the list, the energy idea seems to hold the most promise. Says the President-Elect: “[W]e will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. . . . We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.”

Any government spending “puts people back to work,” of course, but the tax dollars or debt “take people out of work” sooner or later. The trick is to do a better job with the money than people would do investing, spending, or saving their own money, so what’s taken out of the economy more than makes up for itself. Not easily done.

But bringing energy efficiency to the government could lower the price of energy across the board for a long time to come, and it could give consumers and producers a little more breathing room with some truly beneficial effects. It’s the most plausible part of the plan to me, but one can never be sure.

What one can be sure of at this point is that we don’t know how much spending the President-Elect proposes. That’s pretty important to know.

Incidentally, the Obama transition is asking you to share your thoughts.